In the interview below of Douglas Murray (link provided) please note Murray’s good advice to those, especially young people, inspired by Charlie Kirk, to not give way to the temptation to respond with vengeance or similar violence, but to emulate what Kirk did and respond with common decency and courtesy to opponents/disagreeing others, even those screaming abuse. Murray’s point- don’t succumb to the temptation to sink down and meet opponents on their terms with similar hatred and violence. He notes that right up till he was shot, Kirk was arguing that we need to explore ideas, to talk, discuss, and debate civilly, without violence.
Here is the Murray interview: “Douglas Murray and Rita Panahi respond to Charlie Kirk assassination”, Sky News Australia, Sept. 10, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxcrcv1MVvQ
Rubin it in (as in “rubbing in”), Wendell Krossa
Good comment in this report (The Rubin Report- the podcast of a Classic Liberal) on how “the left” has politicized crime to fit their narrative that “racializes everything”. This appears driven by the motivation to smear opponents nonstop with the “racist” pejorative, to affirm the leftist narrative of the intolerable “evil” of all who disagree. That has resulted in the current mainstream media commentary that any concern for crime is racism, especially where skin differences are involved (i.e. the Charlotte stabbing of a Ukrainian immigrant).
Rubin notes that the left projects onto their opponents on the right that they are “politicizing crime”. We have seen this endless projection from Democrats over past years. (And to “leftie” friends and readers, this is not picking on one side only. If similar threat was emanating from the right in a significant manner, I, as fiercely independent and Classic Liberal, would jump on that also. It’s just that many on the left side- Democrats, those formerly identifying as “liberal”- are now mainly exhibiting this madness.)
The pathology of “projection” is where people refuse to acknowledge their own faults, and in some irresponsible state of denial, they deflect or redirect their guilt by projecting their faults onto others, usually their “enemies”. They exhibit what Jesus cautioned against- to not judge and condemn others for a “speck” in their eye, when you have a “beam” in your own eye. Only a Karl Jung could sort out what this is about, probably something to do with one’s own “Shadow” and the felt need to respond to that inner monstrosity and project it out onto others. You know- the “subconscious” stuff Jung was on about.
Rubin says the constant projecting of their far worse failures onto their opponents, and demonizing them as “the evil ones destroying democracy”, is why trust in “Woke Progressive” mainstream media has collapsed. Mainstream media are no longer doing journalism but have shifted to become the propaganda arm for the now far-left Woke Democratic Party.
In response, the millions of people that have left mainstream media, including many Democrats, have now shifted to alternative podcast news forums.
Just an insert: Note in this interview of Douglas Murray, his comment that it is the left that constantly talks about the “hatred” on the right when it is actually their hatred projected out to those disagreeing others. He adds, that where, from the Conservative side, you will get the view that others are wrong but not evil, whereas from the left the narrative is that disagreeing others are irredeemably “evil”, followed with dangerous dehumanization of those disagreeing others. Murray notes that Kirk stated, for example, that there are two sexes, male and female. A statement of fact that those on the left now call “hate speech… speech as violence”. Murray says that such statements-of-fact used to be allowed and respected in America. He says that it has become a terrible situation today in America and the West that such statements of obvious truth, held by millions, are today smeared as “hate speech”.
Note, Rita Panahi opens this interview with a clip of Charlie Kirk arguing for open debate and free speech, and not resorting to violence.
“Douglas Murray and Rita Panahi respond to Charlie Kirk assassination”, Sky News Australia, Sept. 10, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxcrcv1MVvQ
Continuing with Rubin Report…
Rubin repeats his good points on how Democrats racialize most everything today, even when it’s not about race but about the crime that has been committed. He says the issue with the Ukrainian lady killed on the subway is about criminal justice policies that release violent offenders repeatedly to further harm others. That is the failure of a deformed version of compassion that virtue-signals for moral status, and the outcomes of such policies result in horrific harm to others. Gad Saad defines such left-wing compassion as “suicidal empathy”.
The Charlotte train murder also brings up the larger public issue of race, or should we say the new racism- “Woke racism” (John McWhorter). And no matter the crime committed against whom, skin color now determines who is the victim and the victimizer. Hence, the repeated Democratic siding with violent offenders because they are black or brown, and denying or downplaying harm done to whites because they are condemned to “victimizer” status based on skin color. It is a simple-minded tribal dualism that has resulted in the absurdity that we see daily on mainstream media of guilty white elites (self-inflicted guilt over the past racism of their forebears) defending violent criminals and ignoring, downplaying, or outright denying the harm committed against white victims.
Such is the new discrimination validated by the victim/victimizer categories of neo-collectivism. No different from traditional Marxism that divides humanity into only two classes- one all good and the other all evil.
So today we have from the left the narrative of the evil of whites as all oppressors (“there is no form of being white that is good”). This message is repeatedly pushed by neo-racists like Joy Reid, Sonny Hostin, and similar others. How does such messaging in public impact fringe types and mentally unbalanced people? How are people in minority communities responding to narratives that tell them that they are being assaulted by “Hitler, Nazis, fascists, dictators” and must act to defend selves from such oppression and assault?
Add, for example, Nancy Pelosi years ago urging people to make her political opponent’s lives miserable. Or Joy Reid stating that they, Far-left Woke Democrats, must now resort to the same violence that was used by Kyle Rittenhouse on the other side. Fighting fire with fire. Eye for eye vengeance.
This podcast by Rubin is useful for illustrating how we position ourselves within our own versions of the “hero’s quest”, a story of good versus evil that is framed by Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism that posits an unchallengeable Good versus an unsalvageable Evil that must be conquered, eliminated, destroyed. We are urged to be heroes who go forth to engage a righteous battle of good warriors fighting evil enemies that must be vanquished, even exterminated, in order to save something under existential threat.
When we position ourselves as the good guys nobly fighting a righteous battle against irredeemably evil enemies, whom we must exterminate, the tendency is then to demonize our opponents as excessively and irredeemably evil. Righteous heroes/saviors feel the need to dehumanize entirely their enemies as necessary to validate why they must destroy them. And be “righteous” in doing so. Again, that pathology of “killing the right people” as required to attain a better future.
In such situations of intense oppositional and tribal dualism we cannot admit the destructive outcomes of our policies (i.e. recidivism violence from repeatedly released violent offenders) as that would challenge us to question our positions and such doubt would weaken our narrative as noble heroes on the righteous or “just” side of issues. Many view such reflection as threatening to their very identity and that becomes a survival issue, hence desperate defensiveness against any challenge or questioning.
Further, we are impelled by our fundamental need to virtue signal for moral status in society, to frame ourselves as the superior compassionate heroes. Hence, the denial of any harmful outcomes of our salvation schemes.
We cannot admit to ourselves that our narrative and policies may actually embody and exhibit “salvation through destruction”.
Self-convinced righteous saviors refuse to undermine their views of the battle of good against evil and consider that maybe they are the ones actually promoting evil (though projecting such onto their opponents). My point- These features from larger narrative themes and frameworks can deform our personal outlooks and render us irrational and in denial of factual outcomes. Thomas Sowell wisely argued for all of us to rationally consider “the test of facts” on the outcomes to policies that any of us promote.
Further, many today are probing the psychopathology behind the leftwing madness that has been unleashed today, the impulses to intensified tribalism, to domination of others, and then to destroy the disagreeing other (Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn are among the more helpful probers in this regard). We watch mainstream media daily demonize and dehumanize disagreeing others with exaggerated portrayals of opponents as threats to life, threats to democracy and hence deserving censorship (purveyors of “dangerous disinformation” because they disagree with Far-left Woke Progressivism). We have endured past years of the left banning disagreeing others from social media, cancelling those “evil others” by ruining reputations and careers, and even criminalizing. This criminalization of opponents continues (even accelerating) in formerly liberal democracies like Britain. What psychopathology drives all this?
It is the outcome of endlessly smearing differing others with the worst possible pejoratives as “Nazis, Hitler, racists, fascists”. This has divided citizens of the same country and intensified feelings of tribal hatred with the consequent outcome of an eruption of “anti-DEI” mania from those claiming DEI as their supreme ideal. People now, mainly on the far-left, promote (1) the exclusion of differing others (even family, with refusal to share meals), they (2) reject diversity now as “evil” (those daring to disagree with Woke Progressivism), and (3) refuse to treat differing others as equals.
Again, noting the projection pathology, we have a new racism, a new discrimination, from the very people who claim moral superiority as the great social justice warriors battling racism. They now promote Woke Racism where all issues are racialized, even concern over crime. Brian Stelter epitomized this recently. See just the first minute or so of this video clip- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnpjUlvQ6Ak
Note: On this site, my own probing of the psychopathology driving the above issues, covered by Rubin, considers the core narrative themes (i.e. “bad religious ideas”) that validate our worst inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others/enemies.
Added point to this Rubin Report:
The policies enacted in Democrat-run cities over past years (i.e. de-carceration, decriminalization of crimes, etc.) are not the logical or common-sense outcome of holding an unconditional ideal. They are not the sole required application of restorative justice approaches. Democrat polices tend to embrace a deformity of some kind of pacifist extremism with “moral suasion” features that do not work in a world with varied elements such as psychopathy, mental illness (e.g. untreated schizophrenia among homeless), and people unable or unwilling to control their worst impulses.
We all have to beware of yielding to an irresponsible lack of common sense when confronting repeat violent offenders, that too often results in harm to innocent people because of our priority concern to “virtue signal for moral superiority status” against our “enemies”.
The Rubin Report:
“Charlie Kirk notices something in the Charlotte stabbing that most are afraid to admit”, The Rubin Report, Sept. 9, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3-bOlqL0mM
My question for Grok re the fact that it is a small percentage of people who commit most of the violent crimes. My point would be criminal justice reform that did not imprison nonviolent offenders but put in programs that include paying restitution to victims. Again, the number one priority of government to protect citizens from physical assault. And again, I am not agreeing with all that Grok comes back with.
Grok responded:
It’s a well-documented pattern that a small fraction of individuals is responsible for a disproportionate share of violent crime. Data from criminology studies, like those based on arrest records or longitudinal cohort analyses, often show that roughly 5-10% of offenders account for 50% or more of violent incidents in a given area. This holds across contexts— urban, suburban, or rural— and is consistent with things like the Pareto principle applied to crime.
The reasons are complex but often tie back to a mix of socioeconomic factors, psychological traits, and environmental influences. Repeat offenders tend to cluster in high-risk groups: people with prior convictions, exposure to trauma, substance abuse issues, or those stuck in cycles of poverty and gang involvement. For example, studies on urban violence in the U.S. point to gang-affiliated individuals, often less than 1% of a city’s population, driving a huge chunk of homicides and aggravated assaults.
This concentration suggests targeted interventions— like focused deterrence programs or cognitive behavioral therapy for at-risk groups— can be effective without broad overreach. But it also raises tough questions about balancing prevention with civil liberties, since profiling or over-policing can spiral into bigger problems. The flip side is that ignoring the pattern risks letting a small group destabilize entire communities. It’s a messy problem with no clean fix.
Further question for Grok:
What about elements like psychopathology, mental illness, no cash bail, decriminalization of serious crimes, refusal to fulfill the number one priority of government to protect citizens from assault, extremist pacifism in face of violence (releasing repeat violent offenders), impulse to virtue signal for status as morally superior, refusal to acknowledge harmful outcomes of lax policies, etc.
Grok answered:
You’re digging into a thorny mix of factors that tie into the concentration of violent crime among a small group. Let’s break it down, keeping it tight and grounded.
Psychopathology and Mental Illness: Certain disorders, like antisocial personality disorder or severe untreated schizophrenia, are overrepresented among repeat violent offenders. Studies suggest about 15-20% of incarcerated populations have serious mental health issues, compared to 4-5% in the general population. Impulse control disorders and psychopathy (marked by lack of empathy) are particularly linked to recidivism. But not all mentally ill people are violent— stigma clouds this. The issue is when untreated conditions intersect with other risk factors like substance abuse or social instability.
No Cash Bail: The push to eliminate cash bail aims to address inequities, as poorer defendants often can’t pay and stay jailed pre-trial. Critics argue it lets repeat offenders back out too easily, citing cases where released individuals reoffend violently. Data’s mixed: a 2021 study in New Jersey (post-bail reform) showed no clear spike in violent crime, but high-profile cases in places like New York fuel skepticism. It’s a trade-off— fairness versus risk of recidivism— and outcomes depend on how well alternatives like risk assessments or supervision are implemented.
Decriminalization of Serious Crimes: Decriminalizing certain offenses (e.g., drug possession or low-level theft) aims to reduce prison overcrowding and focus on rehabilitation. But when it’s perceived as leniency for serious violent crimes, public trust erodes. For example, some argue California’s Prop 47 (2014), which reduced penalties for some property crimes, indirectly fueled rises in violent crime by emboldening offenders. Evidence is inconclusive— FBI crime stats show no direct causation— but perception of “soft on crime” policies drives backlash.
Government’s Priority to Protect Citizens: The social contract hinges on governments prioritizing public safety. Critics of lax policies argue that failing to detain or punish repeat violent offenders undermines this. For instance, a 2022 report from Chicago showed 55% of homicides were committed by individuals with prior arrests, often released due to prosecutorial discretion or plea deals. When governments prioritize other goals— like reform or equity— over enforcement, it can feel like a betrayal of that core duty, especially in high-crime areas.
Extremist Pacifism and Releasing Repeat Offenders: Policies that lean heavily on non-punitive measures, like releasing repeat violent offenders to avoid incarceration, can backfire. A 2020 study in Philadelphia found that 30% of violent offenders released early under reform policies reoffended within a year. The intent— reducing harm from over-incarceration— clashes with the reality that a small group (those 5-10% repeat offenders) drives most violence. Ignoring their patterns risks public safety.
Virtue Signaling and Refusal to Acknowledge Harmful Outcomes: Some argue that policymakers or activists push lenient reforms to signal moral superiority, prioritizing ideology over outcomes. This can manifest as dismissing data on recidivism or crime spikes to avoid admitting policy failures. For example, progressive DAs in cities like San Francisco or Los Angeles have faced recalls for being seen as ignoring victims’ needs. It’s a feedback loop: denying harmful outcomes fuels distrust, which blocks honest debate about fixes.
The core issue is balance. Over-incarceration breeds its own problems— broken communities, cycles of poverty— but under-enforcement lets a small, dangerous group wreak havoc. Data-driven policies targeting high-risk offenders (e.g., focused deterrence or mental health courts) could bridge the gap, but they need political will and public buy-in. Instead, we often get polarized shouting matches. Messy, as I said.
Charlie Kirk: Honoring a good man, Wendell Krossa
With so many millions of others, and as Greg Gutfeld said just earlier on “The Five”, people have recently criticized the statement- “Thoughts and prayers. But I will say it anyway”. We are with you, Greg. He was responding to the murder of Charlie Kirk, a notable contemporary defender of basic human values, Classic Liberal/Conservative values, like the critical importance of free speech in civil discourse. A man to be honored for his courage in taking the risk to speak out in the face of serious threats. My prayers, with so many others, for his wife and children.
I position more as Independent, not affiliated with either side of the right/left social divide. But I find Classic Liberal values now often defended more by moderate Conservatives like Charlie Kirk. I feel a kindred affinity to such voices and honor them.
Kirk was exceptionally courageous to go right into the center of the sectors of our societies where freedom has been frontally assaulted, in universities and colleges that have become indoctrination centers for “far-left woke progressivism” with its DEI pathology that tribally divides people according to skin color in the new “Woke Racism”, a new variant of the old Marxist oppressed/oppressor divide.
Hopefully, a younger generation of independent, Conservative students will take inspiration from Charlie Kirk’s courageous sacrifice to consider what their legacy will be, something that Jordan Peterson asked people in all walks of life to consider. Did you take a stand for freedom when it mattered most, in the face of threats to freedom?
And do so, not with the hatred and bullying aggression that we see so commonly from the Woke Progressive movement, an authoritarianism that vilifies, smears, censors, bans, and criminalizes all who disagree. That is no longer any form of “liberal”. It has become highly illiberal. Many on that side, authentic liberals, still possessed of common-sense, people like Joe Rogan, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Elon Musk, RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, and others, have felt obligated to leave the formal Democratic party because it moved so far left into the neo-collectivism of Woke Progressivism. And turned dangerously totalitarian.
And this has to be considered: The extremist violence that we witnessed today against Charlie Kirk is undeniably incited, in part, by public voicing of tribal hatred on media, endlessly smearing opponents as “Hitler, racists, Nazis, fascists” who threaten the end of democracy, the end of the world. The constant exaggeration of the evil of disagreeing others, demonizing, dehumanizing them as too dangerous to allow to exist, because they are “existential” dangers and threats. How does such narrative, beaten daily into public consciousness, impact fringe types?
Consider also other background noise- We have had multiple decades now of the madness, the hysterical exaggeration of imminent apocalyptic from natural climate change, another strain of “end of world” lunacy from the left. Such alarmism arouses some of the worst impulses in people to take desperate measures for survival.
You keep beating varied versions of hysterical exaggeration of threats into populations and you will incite the fringe, unbalanced types to take you seriously and to act to become, what they delusionally believe will make them the “heroic saviors of your imagined threatened world”, embracing the deformed version of the hero’s quest to engage “a righteous battle against evil” that is informed by the demented fallacy of “salvation through destruction”. One strain in this pathology is the belief that if you kill the right people, you can achieve a better world.
When you arouse people’s survival impulse with distorting exaggerations and lies of your world under existential threat, that fear-mongering renders many susceptible to irrational violence to save something that you have convinced them is under such dire threat.
That is why this site goes after these consciousness-deforming, personality-deforming ideas like apocalyptic.
It is at these times when hatred has vented its ugly spirit in violence toward disagreeing, different others that we need to watch our own natural impulses to respond with similar hatred and vengeance, and we must hold tight to that ultimate identity marker of a true human spirit- to “love our enemy”. Not to feel fuzzy or warm toward such people and their horrific acts of brutality, but to hold fast the intention to maintain our own humanity, to responsibly hold offenders fully accountable (arresting, imprisoning), but not to enter into eye for eye spirals downward that render all of us petty/inhuman and destroy our societies.
These incidents test all of us. And we want the best forms of inspiration to continue out of the example and sacrifice of Charlie Kirk.
“Charlie Kirk was reviled by the left because he was effective: He spread his ideas with debate, not might”, Jamie Sarkonak, Sep 10, 2025
Sarkonak rightly draws the line of connection between public narratives/speech and the responses/actions of some individuals. He says, “it’s impossible not to make any connection to politics and the growing wave of societal derangement. This is one of the American right’s top conservative influencers, struck by a bullet after years of the progressive left preaching about revolution, about words being violence and about President Donald Trump being the second coming of Hitler.”
He notes that Kirk had a sharp and humorous approach to debates. He “argued against illegal immigration, transgenderism, COVID vaccine mandates, critical race theory, feminism, affirmative action, abortion, soft-on-crime policy, drag queen story hour events for children and a whole lot more. You will find no shortage of “fascist” accusations on Reddit and elsewhere, but Kirk was actually the epitome of old-school classical liberalism. He used argument, not might, to push his ideas into the world — ideas that could get regular folk fired or faced with academic discipline back in 2020. He didn’t evade debate either, instead making it his bread-and-butter format, even taking the discourse to hostile spaces.”
I would agree that in his essential spirit and approach to free speech he was “Classic Liberal”. And that was the problem, the threat to the left and its crusade for domination and control.
As Sarkonak continues, “This is not acceptable to large swaths of the left, who see anything remotely conservative as a step towards a new era of Nazi rule. Many of them, to some degree, have been radicalized into confusing classical liberalism with fascism. They see debate as a threat, mere ideas as viruses to be stopped, and thus opt for deplatforming instead of reason as their primary culture war tactic. The stakes are so high to some that violence is the answer.”
The author’s conclusion: “Whether it’s delusional individuals acting alone or an organized mass, it’s all taking place within the same increasingly sadistic ecosystem that validates the paranoia of society’s worst. In this growing trend of political violence, Charlie Kirk is its latest casualty.”
National Post
This also from National Post–
“Who was Charlie Kirk? What to know about the conservative activist assassinated in Utah: ‘Legendary’ Charlie Kirk was lauded by Donald Trump for understanding young Americans”, Stewart Lewis, Sep 10, 2025
Key points in article: “Kirk, 31, was the founder and president of Turning Point USA…. The organization is described as ‘a national student movement dedicated to identifying, organizing, and empowering young people to promote the principles of free markets, and limited government.’”
What Kirk faced on campuses- “According to Deseret News, more than 6,000 people signed a petition asking Utah State University to bar Kirk from coming to its campus.”
He was not without controversy- “In January 2024, he came under fire for stating on the podcast: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like ‘boy, I hope he is qualified.’” Those comments prompted strong responses from many, including Black pilots.”
Feel the Ideal, the theology, Wendell Krossa
This site expends ongoing effort to communicate the stunning new unconditional theology of Historical Jesus, as contrasted with Paul’s rejection of this message and his retreat to tribal, dominating, punitive, and retaliatory deity in his Christ myth that “buried” the central theme/theology of Jesus (Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy’s conclusion).
The modern NDE (Near-Death Experience) movement comes closest to communicating the nature of the Jesus theology of “unconditional” with detailed accounts. This goes beyond words, descriptions, definitions to give a “feel” for what Historical Jesus was pointing to with his unconditional theology.
Note on the judgment issue that the life review is about self-judgment, what some call “the worst form of judgment”, something that no system of human justice/judgment can impose as potently as we do to ourselves.
“The greatest emphasis of this experience is LOVE. You are so totally engulfed with a love that does not exist in our physical world. No matter how deep a love you feel for your children, it does not compare with this love. This love is the purest, truest, deepest, totally unconditional love that you could ever imagine. It knocks your socks off. When you receive this love, it is not comprehended with your mind. It is FELT by your soul. And that immense feeling of this perfect love shoots straight to your heart, a feeling that you experience. It can bring your soul to its knees. It is totally overwhelming in the best way imaginable.” From the NDE account of “Bobbie”.
“Each one of us is loved deeply and unconditionally by a totally loving God.”
“There is no judgment in (the next life). There is no punishment, no reward. We judge ourselves. In the life review we feel the effects of our actions on all others that we have encountered. Their feelings become our own.” (The experience of empathy- i.e. feeling what others feel- in reviewing all that we have said and done and the self-judgment and learning that emerges from that.)
“I felt the presence of pure love. This is very hard to describe. Everything made sense: God exists, God is love, we are love, and love creates all that is… I was surrounded by pure love. I was warm and comforted.”
“Love was everywhere. It permeated the afterlife. It was incredible.”
“I knew the being I met was composed in its very atoms of a substance I can only call love and that substance created, or was a force or power, like electricity here. Love is the only word I have.”
“It was total love. Everything is love.”
“I felt pure love and tenderness and the feeling of safety.”
“Everything was love. Love is the root of all… Love is everything.”
“Love was everywhere. I felt it through and through.”
“During the experience everything was love. I was love. The Light was love. It was awesome.”
Why bother with expounding these ideas and related issues like outcomes across history? Because what we place at the center of our narratives as the ultimate Ideal and authority, powerfully influences how we think, feel, how we are motivated, and then how we behave in life. We become just like the God that we believe in.
Look around at what varying good and bad ideas are doing to people across our world. How ideas in narratives motivate and validate the differing responses/behaviors of people, for great good or great evil.
This from Robert D. Brinsmead’s Substack robertdbrinsmead@substack.com
This MAN and the Christian Religion are Not Compatible, ROBERT D. BRINSMEAD SEP 9, 2025
The Status of Jesus re-examined in the previous substacks stripped away the ancient myths about dying and rising gods. ‘What is left?’ The answer: “Just a truly human Jesus – a man who refused any titles except the self-effacing ‘son of man’ which simply meant the human one.”
This real Jesus of history was no soft pushover. He was the greatest debunker of religious hierarchies and traditions, the greatest desacralizer of holy places, times, people, rituals, priests, and things that this world has ever seen. The religious establishment hurriedly condemned him to death for blasphemy, while the secular powers executed him for sedition.
That the Christian Church could claim to represent him and carry on his work is an amazing historical irony. It’s like having the old Soviet Union bureaucracy posing as the heir of Adam Smith’s laisse faire capitalism.
The Christian religion built up an elaborate theological edifice. It formed religious orders, hierarchies, rituals, calendars, and creeds that were utterly at odds with the whole life and teachings of the historical Jesus.
And throughout its history, anyone who exhibited anything of the irreverent iconoclasm or freedom of Jesus was systematically condemned, burned alive, tortured, slaughtered, banished, or cast out.
Of course, there is a better side to the Christian movement. Buried beneath its layers of myths, it did preserve something of the history and the spirit of the original man. And the movement has also produced scholars courageous enough to engage in honest historical and literary criticism despite those disapproving big sticks hanging over their heads.
For two hundred years, literary researchers have investigated the puzzling problem of the tension between the Jesus of history (pre-Easter) and the Jesus of the Christian religion (post-Easter). As the research has continued, the crack in the wall dividing the man and the myth has become a yawning chasm.
This is recognized by an increasing number of scholars, both Catholic and Protestant. A very readable Catholic example is Alfred Nolan’s Jesus Before Christianity and Michael Morwood’s Tomorrow’s Catholic: Understanding God and Jesus in a New Millennium. Marcus Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time is an excellent example from a Protestant scholar.
Joshua ben Adam Not Jesus ben Parthenos
In order to maintain the distinction between the historical man and the religious icon, we shall call the former Joshua ben Adam and the latter Jesus ben Parthenos.
The Hebrew name given to this historical figure was Yashua, whose Anglicized form is Joshua. Since Joshua preferred to call himself son of man or son of Adam (which means the same thing) his name was in truth Joshua ben Adam.
When the name Yashua was first Grecianized, then Latinized, and finally Anglicized it became Jesus. Since Christian storytelling depicted him as the Virgin-born, he can quite correctly be called Jesus ben Parthenos, that is, Jesus, son of the Virgin.
Jesus ben Parthenos was the foundation of that great system of religious absolutism known as Christianity. What an elaborate edifice of thought control it became, presided over by a suitably elaborate hierarchy of suitably frocked holy men who could defend the Chalcedonian formula of the hypostatic union of divine and human in one person! Or how God was three persons but not three Gods.
How the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, and not the Father only. How wine became the real blood of Christ sacramentally but not physically. Are we justified before God by a righteousness imputare or efficare?
Is saving faith formed with charity before it justifies or after it justifies?. Is predestination only directed toward the elect (single) or toward the non-elect also (double)? These are just a few of the big theological issues.
We won’t distract ourselves now with minor issues such as the transmission of original sin through sex, the distinction between venial and mortal sin, or distinctions between the intermediate state and the final judgment, and so on. There is enough here that has kept legions of theologians employed for centuries, defining the faith and labelling heretics.
Christianity was not a hundred years old before it was swept up in a contagion of celibacy. A veritable tidal wave of monasteries and nunnery continued unabated for centuries. This was all inspired by the religious devotion to Jesus ben Parthenos, the celibate son of a sexless mother.
The systematic denigration of women and human sexuality among the so-called “early fathers” of the church, down to the time of Augustine in the fourth century, was absolutely appalling. In the mind of Julian, it was all attributable to that “pale Galilean”, whom he lamented, had conquered the world.
It is rationally possible to see a clear line of connection between Jesus ben Parthenos and the great world religion which was founded in his name. But there is no rational link between Joshua ben Adam and the foregoing religious paraphernalia.
He is no more at home in this Christian “temple” than he was in that Jewish temple when his blazing rage sent the furniture and the money counters flying in all directions. Joshua ben Adam is incompatible with religious hierarchicalism, monasticism, creedalism, and washing up the blood of heretics from the floor of the church. You’d have to be joking!
(End of Bob’s Substack post)
Some good points made in this from National Post:
“24 years after 9/11, the West’s on the verge of falling to terrorist ideology: Back then, the free world looked at al-Qaida with revulsion; now, Hamas murderers are feted in the streets”, Sheryl Saperia, Sep 11, 2025
Saperia begins, noting that several decades ago there was less debate about what was evil and how to confront it. But this has all changed now. Today in Canada, “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations in Canada proudly bear terrorist symbols… mobs gather outside synagogues, Jewish restaurants and MPs’ homes with impunity… cultural institutions cancel Israeli stories…”
She notes the public advocacy today for terrorist groups where people chant- “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse be upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.”
And there is little pushback from mainstream society. She says that “Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned, societies can define deviancy down. Behaviour once shocking becomes normalized, eroding moral sensitivity and resolve. Standards drop, permissiveness broadens, and we learn to accept that which we once rejected.”
She continues, “This erosion of boundaries is not accidental. It has been accelerated by the so-called red–green alliance. Though otherwise divergent in their worldviews, the radical left (red) and Islamist movements (green) converge in their hostility towards western democracy, Israel and Jews.”
These apparently disparate groups form loose cooperations to achieve the same end of overturning liberal democracy through extremist crusades, even violence.
“Together, they serve as both drivers and enablers: mobilizing disruptive protests, while also feeding intellectual and cultural justifications that normalize extremism.”
She advocates a response that clearly defines and pushes back against extremist violence and intimidation, that re-affirms liberal democracy principles, laws, and institutions.
“Canada should thus adopt the following definition for extremism: the promotion of ideologies rooted in violence, hatred or intolerance that aim to: (1) negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; (2) undermine, overturn or replace Canada’s democratic institutions and constitutional framework; or (3) create a permissive environment for others to achieve these aims through ideology, coercion or manipulation…
“Our civic institutions, political leaders and cultural voices must reassert that Canada stands for the rule of law, the sanctity of individual rights and the rejection of mob violence. Without these boundaries, moral confusion will continue to erode the foundations of our democracy.”
National Post
“Sheryl Saperia is CEO of Secure Canada, a non-profit organization founded by Canadian 9/11 victim families, whose mission is to combat terrorism and extremism and strengthen Canada’s national security and democracy.”